I enjoy Twitter, but I feel I'm missing something. Blogging forced me to spend a little more time on a subject – not as much as an writing an article does, and certainly way less than a book requires, but definitely more than what's needed to come up with 140 characters, 120 of which often end up being copied from somebody else.
So I'll try to update this place a little more often, even though the Web is probably littered with blogs that end up having famous last meta-entries like this one …
Let’s put it this way. I know absolutely nobody in my personal life that uses Twitter and all of them, like me, haven’t a clue why anyone would use it over blogging and reading them. What one comment do you hear the most about Twitter? Exactly what I just said. Who wants all that clutter in your already uncluttered life. Most of the comments are off the top of the head with little or no thought. If you really had something to say, you wouldn’t be able to say it in 140 characters anyway.
said:
As weird as that might sound, it’s one of those things you can’t possibly understand without trying it for a while. Twitter is a little bit like a crowded party with lots of people you know, and you catch fragments of their conversations … it’s an interesting way to stay in touch with an amazing number of people, some of whom you know well and others you’ve never even met, but find have interesting stuff to say.
But it’s entirely true that unless you’re using it, Twitter’s only effect mostly negative - it sucks a lot of the energy that went into blogging, forum-posting etc. out of its users.
I hope everyone among my readers uses an RSS/Atom feed reader. And I hope the same for you. Because then, if you don’t post a blog entry for a year, well, guess what, nothing happens; people may forget, but the feed reader won’t. The next time you have something to say that feels like a blog post, I, for one, will know about it and, judging by the past, enjoy it.
said:
Jacek, you’d be amazed at how many people don’t use an RSS reader – and not because they don’t know what RSS/Atom is about, rather because they choose to not use it. Like you, I can’t really imagine revisiting a bunch of websites manually to check if there’s something new, but apparently many don’t mind …
On a related note, I believe the number of ex-RSS users on Twitter is pretty high – you essentially get a lot of links to new and interesting stuff there, in a more dynamic (or chaotic) way.
+1 !